I believe in Germany the national weather service in fact rolled out such an app, but was then stopped by a court because this counted as unfair competition with private entities.
In The Netherlands, weather companies sued the national weather service because their new app was seen as competing with their interests, but they lost the court case (summary proceedings): https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-contact/Organisati...
> stopped by a court because this counted as unfair competition with private entities
I came across this recently as well. This is one of the most insane aspects of our current zeitgeist.
In a world where VC unicorns and megacorps commonly engage in dumping behavior to coerce market share, public orgs still need to walk on eggshells so they don't outcompete the "uwu smol bean" private sector. Even when they are providing what could be considered a public good or necessity, like weather info. Totally insane.
